Likely, it was
caused by a shallow magmatic intrusion, but there are no reports
suggesting a submarine eruption.

Popocatépetl (Central Mexico):
On 9 May, 28 explosions were noted from the volcano, the largest were at
05:16 and 07:01 am. Incandescence was seen at night. Several periods of
harmonic tremor were noted in the reporting period. A gas and steam
plume drifted SE.

The activity continued to increase over the past days and CENAPRED
raised the alert level to Yellow Phase 3 this morning. The volcano has
been producing frequent sequences of continuous steam and ash emissions
as well as discrete vulcanian-type explosions that throw glowing bombs
to several hundred meters distance from the crater and create ash plumes
up to about 2 km high.

An explosion on Friday produced
and ash plume rising up to 30,000 ft (9 km) elevation. Ash falls have
been occurring in areas of Santa Fe de Galán, Mocha, Sabañag, Tisaleo
and Quero.

Sabancaya (Peru):
Possible eruptions have started at the volcano. Pilots reported several
volcanic ash plumes from the volcano in the past days although VAAC
Buenos Aires could not identify ash on satellite imagery.

Copahue (Chile/Argentina):
SERNAGEOMIN has recently raised the alert back to yellow after new
small explosions occurred at the volcano and incandescence was observed
at the summit crater. A small but persistent steam-and-ash plume has
been rising about 350 m from the volcano. Interestingly, little change
in the seismic activity has been noticed with the incandescence and
explosions, so it is not clear whether this new activity is caused by
fresh magma rising towards the surface.

May 12, 2013 - CANADA - Residents are 'devastated' after ice from Dauphin Lake pushed ashore. A local state of emergency has been declared in a western Manitoba
municipality after homes in Ochre Beach were destroyed and seriously
damaged by a wave of lake ice.

Some homes in Ochre Beach, Man., are crushed by a wave of ice that was pushed off Dauphin Lake in the evening hours of May 10, 2013. (Submitted by Cade Malone)

The ice, which had built up on Dauphin Lake, was pushed by winds into the community of Ochre Beach on May 10, 2013. (Submitted by Cade Malone)

Area officials told CBC News the wind pushed built-up ice off Dauphin
Lake on Friday evening and caused it to pile up in the community,
located on the lake's southern shore.

The piles of ice, which were more than nine metres tall in some cases,
destroyed at least six homes and cottages, according to the Rural
Municipality of Ochre River.

Another 14 homes suffered extensive damage, with some structures knocked off their foundations.

Clayton Watts, Ochre River's deputy reeve, said it's a miracle no one was hurt.

Residents of Ochre Beach, Man., walk along the shore of Dauphin Lake, which is covered by ice on May 10, 2013. Some of that ice was pushed off the lake by winds, piling up in the community. (Submitted by Cade Malone)

Some of the chunks of ice coming off Dauphin Lake at Ochre Beach, Man., on May 10, 2013. (Submitted by Cade Malone)

A local state of emergency has been declared in a western Manitoba
municipality after homes in Ochre Beach were destroyed and seriously
damaged by a wave of lake ice.

Area officials told CBC News the wind pushed built-up ice off Dauphin
Lake on Friday evening and caused it to pile up in the community,
located on the lake's southern shore.

The piles of ice, which were more than nine metres tall in some cases,
destroyed at least six homes and cottages, according to the Rural
Municipality of Ochre River.

Another 14 homes suffered extensive damage, with some structures knocked off their foundations.

Clayton Watts, Ochre River's deputy reeve, said it's a miracle no one was hurt.

He told CBC News one minute people were watching hockey in their living
rooms, the next they heard something that sounded like a freight train
near their homes.

These homes in Ochre Beach, Man., are crushed by the ice that was pushed off Dauphin Lake on May 10, 2013. (Submitted by Cade Malone)

"It happened so quick," said Watts. "And you can't predict it - not like water that slowly comes up."

Watts said there are several cabins that were completely flattened by the wall of ice that came at them.

"The ice is over top of them, they've been crushed, there's nothing left," he said.

"There are other cabins that have been knocked right off their
footings," he continued. "There's ice right over top of some of the
cabins, coming over the roof on the other side."

According to Environment Canada winds were registered at about 80 km/h in the area Friday night.

This structure was pushed off its foundations by built-up lake ice in Ochre Beach, Man., on May 10, 2013. (Submitted by Cade Malone)

No insurance coverage for ice damage
Dennis Stykalo, who's cottage is full of ice after Friday night's wind
storm, told CBC News his insurance does not cover damage done by ice.

He said he's devastated after the event - he can't even get inside to recover his valuables.

"You know you've got cement, concrete blocks, and steel and the ice goes
through it like its just a toothpick," said Stykalo. "It just shows the
power. There is nothing you can do, you just get out of the way and
just watch."

Piles of ice as high as nine metres were forced off Dauphin Lake into the community of Ochre Beach, Man., on May 10, 2013. (Submitted by Cade Malone)

CBC News also contacted an insurance company in Winnipeg who said
generally coverage is not provided for damage to homes caused by
shoreline ice build up or water-borne ice.

Same area hit by flood in 2011

The damage is even more traumatic for some, he added, as many of the homes in the area were ruined by flooding in 2011.

May 12, 2013 - TRINIDAD & TOBAGO - The Environmental Management Authority (EMA) is investigating reports
of hundreds of fish found dead and floating in a section of the La
Pastora River in Santa Cruz yesterday. CEO of the EMA Joth Singh said
the authority was alerted to the situation when fish were found floating
in the river, and immediately dispatched officers to investigate. The
authority also reported it to the Institute of Marine Affairs (IMA) but
up to late yesterday there was no answer as to what had happened to the
fish.

A La Pastora resident shows one of the dead fish found in the La Pastora River, near La Pastora Road, yesterday.
PHOTO: COURTESY PAPA BOIS CONSERVATION

The alert came from the NGO Papa Bois Conservation and one of its
directors, Marc de Verteuil. In a brief telephone interview yesterday,
de Verteuil said residents told him yesterday morning that “thousands”
of fish were dead in the river. “I went to check it out and I spoke to
some eyewitnesses, but by the time I got there, there was about 100 fish
dead in the river, in a very small area. “It looked like a pretty
significant event.” La Pastora resident Alex Franco described
yesterday’s ordeal as a “freak incident.”

“Nothing like this has happened here before.” Franco, who lives near
the river, sets traps to catch fish for food. He said he had set fish
traps on Thursday afternoon and caught three fish but when he checked
his traps the following morning they were full of dead fish and hundreds
more were floating down the river. Franco said as late as 6 pm
yesterday EMA staff were still doing tests on the water outside of his
home.

Residents of La Pastora use the river for fishing and for irrigation
for agricultural land. In recent months there has been a fish kill in
Brasso and an incident in which hundreds of dead and dying corbeaux were
found in Chaguaramas. No explanation has yet been found for either. - Guardian.

May 12, 2013 - UNITED STATES - The immigration reform measure the Senate began debating yesterday would create a national biometric database of virtually every adult in the U.S., in what privacy groups fear could be the first step to a ubiquitous national identification system.

Illustration: National Institutes of Health

Buried in the more than 800 pages of the bipartisan legislation (.pdf) is language mandating the creation of the innocuously-named “photo tool,” a massive federal database administered by the Department of Homeland Security and containing names, ages, Social Security numbers and photographs of everyone in the country with a driver’s license or other state-issued photo ID.

Employers would be obliged to look up every new hire in the database to verify that they match their photo.

This piece of the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act is aimed at curbing employment of undocumented immigrants. But privacy advocates fear the inevitable mission creep, ending with the proof of self being required at polling places, to rent a house, buy a gun, open a bank account, acquire credit, board a plane or even attend a sporting event or log on the internet. Think of it as a government version of Foursquare, with Big Brother cataloging every check-in.

“It starts to change the relationship between the citizen and state, you do have to get permission to do things,” said Chris Calabrese, a congressional lobbyist with the American Civil Liberties Union. “More fundamentally, it could be the start of keeping a record of all things.”

For now, the legislation allows the database to be used solely for employment purposes. But historically such limitations don’t last. The Social Security card, for example, was created to track your government retirement benefits. Now you need it to purchase health insurance.

David Bier, an analyst with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, agrees with the ACLU’s fears.

“The most worrying aspect is that this creates a principle of permission basically to do certain activities and it can be used to restrict activities,” he said. “It’s like a national ID system without the card.”

For the moment, the debate in the Senate Judiciary Committee is focused on the parameters of legalization for unauthorized immigrants, a border fence and legal immigration in the future.

The committee is scheduled to resume debate on the package Tuesday. - WIRED.

May 12, 2013 - UNITED STATES - Ice outs are still happening on lakes in northern Minnesota because of our cold and snowy spring.

Now, homes along the shore of Mille Lacs Lake are getting damaged
because the ice is moving like a glacier, and pushing up against the
homes.

In a video sent to us by KSTP viewer, Darla Johnson, you can see the ice
making its charge onto shore. Then in a matter of minutes the wind
pushes the ice about 15 feet from the shore to the doors of a home.

Johnson even tried saving patio furniture but she
couldn't stop the ice before it pushed in doors and windows, causing
damage.

The ice is piled up about three feet high.

Johnson says some crews were working to get the ice away from the homes, but "it's a battle they're not winning right now."

Some access roads near Izatys Resort were closed Friday, according to
Johnson. Only local residents were being let through, she said. - KSTP.

May 12, 2013 - IRAN - A strong earthquake of 6.2 magnitude hit southern Iran early on Saturday, killing one child and injuring at least 20 others in remote, mountainous villages, state television reported.

The US Geological Survey registered the quake at 0208 GMT, measured at 85 kilometres (52 miles) southeast of the town of Minab, located in the southern Hormuzgan province and off the Strait of Hormuz.
The quake was registered at a depth of 36.44 kilometres (22.64 miles), the USGS said.

A local emergency official said a two-year-old died of serious injuries. “The child passed away on route to hospital,” Mohammad Shekari was quoted by the ISNA news agency.

Iran’s top quake rescue operations official, Mahmoud Mozafar, said at least 20 people had been injured.
Iran sits astride several major fault lines and is prone to frequent earthquakes, some of which have been devastating.

Head of Iran’s National Institute for Oceanography Vahid Chegini said Saturday’s quake was unlikely to spark a tsunami in the Gulf or the Sea of Oman.

“The chances of a tsunami because of today’s quake are remote as the quake was inland,” Chegini told the Mehr news agency.

Mozafar, who heads Iran’s Red Crescent rescue corps, said rescue teams were dispatched to Hormuzgan’s remote area hit by the quake.

Provincial emergency chief Hossein Ranjbar told state television that some 70 villages had suffered severe damage in the quake, which according to Iran’s Seismological Centre was followed by a series of aftershocks, measuring between 4.1 and 5.2.

Media reports said electricity and telephone connection had been cut, while rescue teams were attempting to open blocked roads to the quake-hit areas. Last month, the biggest earthquake to hit the country in 50 years, measuring 7.8 killed a woman and injured more than a dozen other people in the southeast.

At least 40 people were killed across the border in Pakistan where hundreds of mud homes were levelled.

Putting aside America’s longstanding enmity with Iran and its more recent strains in relations with Pakistan, US Secretary of State John Kerry had offered condolences and assistance with relief work for last month’s quake. Also in April, another quake struck near Iran’s Gulf port city of Bushehr, killing at least 30 people.

The UN’s atomic agency said there was no damage to Iran’s only and Russian-built nuclear power plant at Bushehr. Iran said the plant continued its operations as normal.

In August 2012, a double earthquake, one measuring 6.2 and the other 6.0, struck northwestern Iran, killing more than 300 people and injuring 3,000.

In December 2003, a massive quake struck the southern Iranian city of Bam. It killed 26,271 people - about a quarter of the population - and destroyed the city’s ancient mud-built citadel.

Iran then accepted disaster relief from the United States, contributing to a brief thaw in relations between the two, which have had no diplomatic relations for more than three decades. - The Nation.

May 12, 2013 - CANADA - Winnipeg police have blocked a large sinkhole at an intersection in the city's north end Sunday.

A large sinkhole in Winnipeg's north end has been taped off by police. (CBC)

Officers were called to Airlies Street and Ashbury Bay at about 1 p.m.

City crews are currently on scene assessing the crater. The city said the sinkhole will be repaired Monday.

Homes in the area will not have water Monday, so crews can test for a possible leak.

Sinkholes are depressions and holes that occur in
the surface of land. Most are caused by fluctuating water levels
underground, but they can also be caused by things such as the collapse
of an underground cave or an abandoned mineshaft.

Other things that can trigger a sinkhole is human activity. When
groundwater is pumped out for irrigation, the overall groundwater level
can drop, which can start the creation of a sinkhole. - CBC News.

May 12, 2013 - UNITED STATES - Usually we have to prioritize, and keep track of the big issues... which
in politics means we don't deal with anything less than a trillion
dollars. Bank bailouts, the various new and old undeclared wars, the
Federal Reserve printing money to buy our own Treasury bonds; that sort
of thing.

Doomed Owls. Credit Bill Walker.

But today I'm going to look at the US government's approach to a small
thing: an owl. Namely, the Barred Owl, which has through hard work,
saving and investment (in-nestment?), managed to extend its range even
in this recession. The owl is a great neighbor to humankind and a boon
to our parks and forests, spending most of its time hunting and
destroying rodents that carry bubonic plague fleas. It is a beautiful
predator with a haunting, tourist-attracting call. So naturally, the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (a bureau of the DOI) has started a
million-dollar program to... terminate the owls and their owlets without
mercy.

Yes, your taxes are even now paying for empty-eyed Department of the
Interior owlinators to go from nest to nest with 12-gauge shotguns and
copies of Peterson's Field Guide to the Birds, with the Barred Owl
picture highlighted like Sarah Connor's name in an LA phone book. Night
vision scopes, thermal imaging, and Predator drones (well, in this case,
anti-predator drones) give the owls little chance. The first stage of
the plan is to blast about 9,000 owls and their families into small
bloody pieces of fluffy down, but the program is open-ended. Listen, and
understand: The Department of the Interior is out there. It can't be
bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or
remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until those
owls are dead!

If you don't care about small things like owls, care
about this: the Department of the Interior will spend about 12.4
billion in FY 2013. The Department of Agriculture will spend about $154
billion dollars in FY 2013. This money goes into programs to raise your
grocery bill by paying farmers not to grow food, to raise your gasoline
prices by forcing refineries to water it down with alcohol, to raise the
price of housing with subsidized subprime loans (because that has
worked so well for our economy), to subsidize uneconomic logging, and
finally, to put 15 percent of the US population on food stamps. And
these are just two smallish departments among many.

All of that money could simply be left in the real economy instead. In
our pockets, for us to decide what to subsidize. Healthy food would be
cheaper, gasoline would be cheaper, housing would be cheaper. The
products that we chose to buy would produce millions of jobs, so that
most people wouldn't have to be on Food Stamps.

And there would be 9,000 more live owls in the forest. An owl is a small
thing to a bureaucracy, but still important to some people. - Bedford Patch.

May 12, 2013 - UNITED STATES - For the second year running, a spring die-off of hundreds of spawning-age red drum has occurred in Mobile Bay.

Alabama Marine Resources Department personnel, who surveyed the situation on the water Thursday, estimate finding nearly 400 floating in the bay with about 100 dead hardhead catfish mixed in.

In
this picture taken Thursday by Alabama Marine Resources Division
personnel, a badly decomposed bull redfish floats on Mobile Bay's
surface. It was one of an estimated 400 spawning-size fish found
floating between Mullet Point and Little Point Clear. A similar number
and size of bull redfish were involved in a die-off in the same location
toward the end of April 2012. (Courtesy Alabama MRD)

Red drum are commonly called redfish, with the larger specimens known as bull redfish because of their hard-charging fighting ability when hooked by fishermen.

“It’s disturbing,” said Chris Blankenship, Director of Alabama’s Marine Resources Division. “It does seem very unusual that it’s happened in the same place at nearly the same time of year. I don’t ever recall it being an annual thing.”

Brooks Delaney reported seeing more than 20 dead redfish as he ran from Fish River to Little Point Clear and back during a Friday morning fishing trip. All of the fish appeared to be larger than Alabama’s 16- to 26-inch slot limit.

He added that some of the fish appeared to have died recently, but most were well along in the decomposition process.

As was the case last year, Blankenship said all of the fish MRD personnel encountered were far too decomposed to provide valid samples for scientific testing.

WATCH: Mass Fish Die-Off in Mobile Bay - 2012.

“All of the fish seemed to have been dead two or three days at the least. We can’t send them off for causational bacterial testing because bacterial growth upon their death has already begun,” he said.

As was the case last year, absent any kind of scientific proof, he said it will be almost impossible to determine what has caused this die-off.

Results of salinity tests MRD personnel conducted Thursday showed a heavy influx of freshwater in Mobile Bay had sent levels down to 7 parts per thousand, Blankenship said.

A normal salinity level for early May would be more than double that level, but he did not think it was so low as to kill a large fish species such as redfish.

“With all the rain we’ve had recently, there’s a lot of freshwater coming down, but redfish should be able to handle that,” he said.

Dr. Sean Powers, a Dauphin Island Sea Lab fisheries scientist who has been studying redfish for 16 years, said, like last year’s kill, he’s not concerned about its impacts on the Gulf’s redfish population.

“Obviously, it concerns me that this is a repeated event,” Powers said. “It’s very strange.”

Many fish kills are the result of low dissolved oxygen in the water, but Powers said large redfish are usually able to avoid it.

Plus, low dissolved oxygen is most often an issue during the oppressive heat of summer and water even in dynamic environments such as Mobile Bay can stagnate in pockets, especially at night when oxygen-producing microscopic plants in the water quit producing it.

Based on remote readings at Middle Bay Lighthouse and Cedar Point, daytime and nighttime dissolved oxygen levels have remained well above the 2 milligrams per liter level that Powers said is critical for fish to thrive.

Age-composition results from ear-bone samples taken from fish by Sea Lab personnel during the 2012 die-off showed that the fish ranged from 7 to 25 years old.

Powers added that these die-offs are not the result of natural mortality.

“With natural mortality, you would have a little bit of the population die every year. It wouldn’t all happen at the same time,” he said.

“It just wasn’t very effective because the die-off was apparently an isolated, one day event,” he said. “We’re going to continue monitoring the situation, and in the case of another event, we might consider trying to catch live fish for testing.”

Until Thursday, there had been no additional large-scale redfish die-offs reported. - AL.

May 12, 2013 - UNITED STATES - New Orleans police are searching for three suspects Sunday after at least 19 people were shot during a Mother’s Day parade.

Police spokeswoman Remi Braden said in an email that many of the victims were grazed and most of the wounds weren't life-threatening. No deaths were reported.

Bystanders comfort a shooting victim while awaiting EMS at the intersection of Frenchmen and N. Villere Streets after gunfire injured at least a dozen people, including a child, at a Mother's Day second-line parade on Sunday, May 12, 2013. Lauren Mcgaughy / The Times-Picayune / Landov

The FBI said that the shooting appeared to be "street violence" and wasn't linked to terrorism.

The victims included 10 men, seven women, a boy and a girl. The children, both 10 years old, were grazed and in good condition. Police said at least two people were in surgery Sunday night.

Mayor Mitch Landrieu urged witnesses to come forward with information during a news conference Sunday night at a hospital where gunshot victims were taken.

"These kinds of incidents will not go unanswered. Somebody knows something. The way to stop this violence is for you all to help," he said.

Mary Beth Romig, a spokeswoman for the FBI in New Orleans, said federal investigators have no indication that the shooting was an act of terrorism.

"It's strictly an act of street violence in New Orleans," she said.

Chief Serpas announced in a press conference earlier on Sunday that the youngest victim is believed to be a 10-year-old girl. Police say she suffered a graze wound, WVUE Fox 8 reported.

Officers were interspersed with the marchers, which is routine for such events. As many as 400 people joined in the procession that stretched for about 3 blocks, though only half that many were in the immediate vicinity of the shooting, Serpas said.

Serpas said that the procession had been accompanied by officers, who saw two or three suspects run from the scene in the city's 7th Ward.

Outside the hospital on Sunday night, Leonard Temple teared up as he talked about a friend of his who was in surgery after being shot three times during the parade. Temple was told the man was hit while trying to push his own daughter out of the way.

"People were just hanging out. We were just chilling. And this happened. Bad things always happen to good people," said Temple, who was at the parade but didn't see the shootings.

In the late afternoon, the scene was taped off and police had placed bullet casing markers in at least 10 spots.

WATCH: Mass shooting in New Orleans.

Nobody had been arrested as of Sunday night.

Eleven patients have been admitted to Interim LSU Public Hospital with no life threatening injuries, hospital spokesperson Marvin McGraw said.

Second-line parades are loose processions in which people dance down the street, often following behind a brass band. They can be impromptu or planned and are sometimes described as moving block parties.

A social club called The Original Big 7 organized Sunday's event. The group was founded in 1996 at the Saint Bernard housing projects, according to its MySpace page.

The neighborhood where the shooting happened was a mix of low-income and middle-class row houses, some boarded up. As of last year, the neighborhood's population was about 60 percent of its pre-Hurricane Katrina level.

Police vowed to make swift arrests.

"We'll get them. We have good resources in this neighborhood," Serpas said. - FOX News.

May 12, 2013 - CHINA - In the early morning of May 9, the rain after Emperor lake surface, floating a large number of fish turned belly. Many people suspected a problem with the water quality, the Zhongyuan District Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Monitoring brigade staff said, from the inspection situation, the fish turned belly may be related to the lack of oxygen in rain water.

All fish farmers distressed stomp

Yesterday, 8:30, located Navigation Road tongbai Road intersection the Royal lake on the southeast side of the hordes of fish spit blisters, a sluggish, anemic. The shore catch fish, random shuffled around the hook and string bag to fish in, will soon be hooked to or to groan a fish.

Master Liu Yuejin, who lives in Tai Lake Gardens, remove drive a man to fish and filled the trunk of the car pulled to the side of the road to sell some people have also caught fish.

'The lake is so big, I have no control, only fishing with them.' Talk of the town distressed contracting Royal Lake fish straight stamping, he said the 'turned belly' silver carp, a few one thousand kilograms, so that he lost at least $ 60,000, but only watched people go fishing.

The fish turned belly hypoxia may rain

Many people suspect that water quality is a problem. Zhengzhou City, the river management office staff said that this year due to the Emperor Hunan side of bridge building construction, this is April 1 turned off the water flowing through the Tai Lake Reservoir valve for the public suspect along the sewage into the lake, the staff said less likely.

10:00 yesterday, the Central Plains District Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Monitoring brigade staff came to the lake to investigate. Take water samples, the staff said, on April 26 last year, the Royal Lake after a heavy rain, the fish turned Tong situation, sampling was conducted by the team, no abnormality was found April 18 this year, the team had Tai Lake water quality sampling was conducted and found no abnormalities. pond fish turned again yesterday, from the point of view of the check may rain The lack of oxygen in water.

Subsequently, the reporter to the Jiangang around the reservoir fish ponds visited and found that fish ponds have aerators, do not turn fish pond, and a few did not install the aerator ponds, the same fish turned Tong situation.

Provincial Academy of Fishery Sciences, a staff on duty said that the crest of the mud after the rain, river water, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide and other organic matter content increased, consume large amounts of oxygen, causing the fish floating on the water and turned belly. - News King.

May 12, 2013 - MYANMAR - A tropical cyclone heading toward Bangladesh and western Myanmar is
raising fears of a potentially devastating humanitarian crisis in
Myanmar's Rakhine state, where 140,000 Rohingya refugees displaced by
sectarian violence are living in makeshift camps.

"Many of the
camps are located in low-lying coastal areas, susceptible to tidal
surge," said the United Nation's Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs. The about 45,000 refugees living in Sittwe,
Pauktaw, Myebon and Kyauktaw in Rakhine state are the "most vulnerable,"
it added.

The U.N. humanitarian office on Saturday detailed
what they described as "the high risk and vulnerability" of people
living in Myanmar's western coastal areas. It has held emergency
meetings in Yangon and Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine state. A United
Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination team is also on standby.

The
worst of the storm—currently in the Bay of Bengal—is headed toward
Bangladesh, officials said. It is expected to reach land just south of
Chittagong, the second largest city in Bangladesh, on Wednesday, with
heavy rains and strong winds expected in Myanmar's Rakhine state,
according to Myanmar authorities and United Nations agencies.

Tropical
cyclones, which bring with them heavy thunderstorms, violent winds and
flooding, can be vicious. Cyclone Nargis, which struck Myanmar's
southern areas in 2008, destroyed entire villages and towns, killing
more than 130,000 people.

Ye Htut, a spokesperson for Myanmar President Thein Sein,
said in a post on his official Facebook page that local radio stations
are issuing warnings to people living in Rakhine state, particularly
fishermen who have been told not to go out to sea. Authorities there, he
said, are putting in place early notification systems. Myanmar's
Department of Meteorology and Hydrology has also warned that people in
the country's northwest should move to higher ground and sheltered
areas.

Bangladesh has activated a signal 3 out of 10 response,
and warned fishermen not to venture out to deep waters and alerted
coastal communities that they may have to evacuate in case of possible
cyclonic activity, depending on the trajectory of the storm. The United
Nations estimates that 60 million people could be at risk there, but
this could change as the cyclone approaches.

The cyclone—locally
being called Cyclone Mohasen—could veer off from its current trajectory
and head deeper into western Myanmar, where aid agencies have long
warned of a coming crisis when monsoon rains hit fragile shelters
housing the Muslim Rohingyas, who were displaced by violent clashes with
majority Buddhists last year.

The impending rains—which mark
the start of Myanmar's monsoon season—underscore the urgency of the
country's government to get a handle on sectarian tensions in Rakhine
state. Since violence between Buddhists and ethnic minority Rohingyas
broke out there last year, religious violence and deep-seated
hostilities have prevented Rohingyas from returning to their homes or
being resettled in other areas of the country. Tens of thousands have
attempted to flee the country to neighboring Indonesia, Malaysia and
Thailand, many drowning before they got to shore.

Rohingyas, not
considered citizens of Myanmar by the country's government, are
extremely restricted in their mobility, even between refugee camps.
Though Myanmar's neighbors and bilateral partners have urged authorities
to solve the problem there, resettlement of the minority group has
remained complicated, particularly after clashes between Buddhists and
Muslims spread to other regions in Myanmar this March.

The
devastating 2008 cyclone affected 2.4 million, mostly in Myanmar,
according to the U.N., and was considered one of the worst natural
disasters in the country's history. Myanmar's then military government
was widely criticized over its handling of the disaster, and accused of
initially limiting foreign aid to even the worst-hit areas. - WSJ.

A Muslim Rohingya child sits outside a tent at the Bawdupha Internally
Displaced Persons
(IDP) camp on the outskirts of Sittwe, the capital of
Myanmar's western Rakhine state.

Myanmar on Sunday began moving people into emergency shelters as a
cyclone threatened to batter a violence-wracked region home to tens of
thousands of internal refugees.

About 140,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) living in flimsy tents or makeshift housing are seen as particularly vulnerable to cyclone Mahasen, which was gathering strength in the Bay of Bengal.

The cyclone is expected to make landfall somewhere near the Myanmar-Bangladesh border on Thursday morning, according to Myanmar's Department of Meteorology and Hydrology.

It said Mahasen, which was packing winds of up to about 100 kilometres (60 miles) per hour, was likely to intensify into a "severe cyclonic storm" within the next 24 hours, warning ships to be on alert.

The IDPs at particular risk are mostly stateless Rohingya Muslims uprooted by two outbreaks of deadly religious violence since June last year.

"There are people still living in temporary tents. Now we are moving as many of those IDPs as we can to the stronger permanent shelters," Myo Thant, a spokesman for the Rakhine state government, told AFP by telephone.

He said he was unsure of the capacity of the shelters -- which are located in the state capital Sittwe -- but acknowledged that there were not enough to accommodate all of the displaced people.

"The rest will be sent to stay with relatives in villages, and to nearby school buildings," he added.

Local radio issued warnings of the approaching cyclone while loudspeakers relayed messages to people in villages in Rakhine, one of Myanmar's poorest and most remote states.

The alerts revived memories of cyclone Nargis, which devastated Myanmar's Irrawaddy Delta in May 2008, killing about 140,000 people.

The UN's disaster assessment agency said preparations were under way to provide shelter for up to 13,000 displaced people in Sittwe, voicing "particular concern" for IDPs living in "poorly constructed camps."

"Many of the camps are located in low-lying coastal areas susceptible to tidal surge," it warned.

Myanmar views its population of roughly 800,000 Rohingya as illegal Bangladeshi immigrants and denies them citizenship.

New York-based Human Rights Watch last month accused Myanmar of "a campaign of ethnic cleansing" against the Rohingya, citing evidence of mass graves and forced displacement affecting tens of thousands.

Thousands of Rohingya have fled the Buddhist-Muslim violence on rickety boats, mostly believed to be heading for Malaysia. - Bangkok Post.

May 12, 2013 - UNITED STATES - A mystery in Quincy continues to deepen: Who is flying around the city from dusk to dawn, for the past ten days or so? “It’s frightening, not just weird, but frightening,” said one resident of the Wollaston section.

Mystery Aircraft Frightens Quincy Residents.

Every night for nearly the last two weeks, residents have spotted a low-flying aircraft doing loops over the city. WBZ has learned the FAA knows what’s going on, but the agency isn’t telling.

“I mean it is strange. I don’t know if they’re looking for somebody, I have no idea,” one resident told WBZ.

It’s not the state or local police doing the flying, and the FAA is giving out little information, even to city officials.

“It’s frustrating, it really is,” says City Councillor Brian Palmucci. “I specifically asked, ‘Is it a law enforcement flight? Can we tell people that?’ He said, ‘No, we can’t tell you that.’ Then I asked that when folks call me can I at least tell them that it is something that they shouldn’t worry about, it’s something they shouldn’t be concerned with? He said, ‘I can’t tell you that.’” The aircraft doesn’t appear to be flying when it’s cloudy out, only taking to the skies on starlit nights.

Sources tell WBZ that the aircraft is not a drone, that it is manned. FAA spokesman Jim Peters would only say, “We have to be very careful this time” concerning information.

Even the Mayor has been kept in the dark. “We’re as frustrated as our constituents,” said Mayor Tom Koch. “We’d like to be able to give our citizens some answers, but we don’t have any answers.”

Obviously when the federal government wants to keep something quiet, they keep it very quiet. In this case, they wouldn’t even say how long it would continue flying for.

WATCH: Mystery over Quincy.

“The FBI does not comment on aerial activity,” a statement from the bureau said.

In the meantime, neighbors are complaining the plane is keeping them up at night.

“This strong humming sound as you look up and you go, ‘Oh there she goes again.’ It goes all the way around, comes all the way back, keeps going at 5 o’clock in the morning,” one resident told WBZ NewsRadio.

Palmucci is just hoping he can ease any worries his residents are sharing.

“If it’s an operation that requires some secrecy, that can be appreciated by residents,” said Palmucci. “Just at the very least if the FAA can release something that says there’s nothing that should cause folks any concern, I think that would put people at ease.” - CBS Boston.

'Unbearable' Smell In Quincy Is A Mystery.

Living so close the ocean, residents at The Moorings at Squantum Gardens are used to the full spectrum of sea scents wafting over to their building.

“Maybe occasionally you get bad smells, but it was never this constant, six weeks of this now,” said Don Duggan, who’s lived in the apartment community for seniors since it opened in 2007. “You can smell it walking the hallway.”

The mysterious odor – a potent mix of sulfur and rotten eggs – hits the nose at the intersection of Quincy Shore Drive and East Squantum Street. The city has hired chemists from UMass Boston to test water samples for the presence of any bacteria that could contain clues about the smell’s origin.

“The city immediately took bacteria samples to see if it was sewage; those tests came back negative,” city spokesman Christopher Walker said. “But we’re still waiting to determine exactly what it is.”

Walker said preliminary indications are that the smell is linked to a naturally-occurring phenomenon, perhaps red algae.

“Unfortunately, it appears to be something at this point that’s occurring in nature and doesn’t have an immediate remedy, other than waiting for nature to run its course,” he said.

The lab tests are expected back next week.

Ward 6 City Councilor Brian McNamee said in a newsletter he sent to constituents this week that tests had linked the odor to red tide, a condition caused by naturally occurring algae that produce a toxin shellfish absorb as they feed.

McNamee cited a conversation with mayoral aide James Fatseas in the newsletter, but said there is now less certainty than there was at the time about the cause.

“I’ve heard so many stories,” he said. “I don’t think (officials), because it’s a periodic problem, have ever exhibited the will power to drill down on it completely. It’s been a issue for a good month now.”

The state Division of Marine Fisheries has not issued a red tide alert for Quincy, which it does to warn people to avoid eating clams and mussels from affected areas.

“It may be some other type of algae,” said Reggie Zimmerman, a spokesman for the state agency that oversees marine fisheries. “The way red tide typically happens, it would hit the North Shore first before it got all the way down to Quincy.”

Anamarija Frankic, a UMass Boston environment professor and Squantum resident, said the smell is clearly abnormal and not part of the normal processes of salt marshes.

“It’s never this horrible smell that we’ve been smelling the last couple of weeks,” she said. “Nature has that sometimes little bit higher sulfur smell ... but this smells like poop, I’m sorry.”

Longtime Quincy clam digger Neil Malick said clams from the area recently were showing signs of a virus, and guessed that the smell is coming from dead shellfish.

There is a Massachusetts Water Resources Authority sewer pipe in the water that carries waste from Squantum to the Fenno Street area. Officials said the MWRA has checked their mains and found no issues.

For all the mixed signals about the cause, resident Peg Buchanan knows one thing for certain about the smell.

"It's a problem all over. It appears all over Northeastern Minnesota,
probably all over Northern Minnesota," said WildWoods Rehabilitation
Board of Directors President, Nancy Wolfe.

Wolfe says the problem isn't just limited to loons.WildWoods has also rescued 14 grebes, another type of bird, from the same fate.

"It [the grounded bird] has no food source. It has no way to move. It
has no way to get up and fly to get to a food source. So it's simply
going to die of starvation," said Wolfe.

Both LoonWatch and WildWoods Rehab are asking for the public's help in
rescuing the loons. They ask if you see a loon on the ground to call one
of the number below immediately. - Northland News Center.

May 12, 2013 - UNITED STATES - With the real estate market as shaky as it is, homeowners can't afford to deal with more problems. And yet there are always problems, ranging from noisy neighbors to sinkholes.

The prevalence of reports of sinkhole damage in the U.S. this year has raised questions about the impact on property values.

It's not the threat of a sinkhole that damages property value –– there's insurance coverage specifically for sinkhole damage. In fact, a 2007 study found no statistically significant difference in home values in areas prone to sinkholes.

Like earthquakes, it's only after sinkholes hit your property that problems arise.Rob Arnold,
a Florida real estate investor and realtor who has bought and sold more
than 30 sinkhole properties in the last five years, told CF13 News he
tells owners of damaged homes to knock 30% off their asking price, plus
the cost of any repairs. - Business Insider.

"Out of 25 forest fires, 15 have been put out, seven are active in the
Republic of Sakha [Yakutia], with one of them contained, and three
others have been contained in the Khabarovsk Territory," the department
said in a statement.

Over the past day, fire covered some 936 hectares in the region. As of Friday morning, the figure was nearly 13,000 hectares.

The firefighting effort involved 474 people, 40
items of equipment and seven aircraft, including four helicopters.

In the summer of 2010, devastating wildfires swept across Russia,
killing more than 50 people, destroying thousands of houses, 2.6 million
hectares of woods and a quarter of the country's grain harvest.

According to Greenpeace reports, last year's wildfires in Russia were at some point even worse than in 2010. - RIA Novosti.

May 12, 2013 - UNITED STATES - The Division of Natural Resources is investigating a reported fish kill at Tygart Lake.

DNR staff was at Tygart Lake Thursday after receiving reports of about 100 dead white bass in the lake. The DNR has also received reports from anglers indicating that they've seen about 10 small and large mouth bass that were either dead or appeared to be unhealthy.

DNR fish biologists are evaluating the situation with Department of Environmental Protection staff. Crews are trying to determine if the fish kill is concentrated in one specific area.

Biologists are monitoring and collecting fish to perform a health analysis that will determine whether the fish have been exposed to a specific pathogen, bacteria or an environmental issue, said Bret Preston, assistant chief of Wildlife Resources.

The cause of the fish kill has not been determined at this time.

Update

The Division of Natural Resources said it continues to investigate after approximately 130 white bass fish that were found dead in the Tygart Lake Thursday.

The DNR said the fish were affected by a disease that it does not think has affected any other species.

WATCH: DNR Investigating Fish Found Dead in Tygart Lake.

DNR will collect some fish at the lake next week for testing but said that all water chemistry looks normal.

"We can't do anything about it. It's very complicated to test diseases in fish. We have to catch sick fish or those who are still alive. We cannot evaluate a dead fish," said a DNR official.

May 12, 2013 - UNITED KINGDOM - On June 9, 2008, at least 60 dolphins stranded along the coast of
Cornwall, England, in what was by far the largest common dolphin
mortality ever seen in British waters. For hours, rescuers tried to lead
them back to sea - often unsuccessfully, as some of the animals were
panicked and others just milled about in tight circles, resistant to
saving. The forensic investigation that followed involved 24 experts
from five countries and multiple government agencies.

For several days before the strandings, the British Royal Navy ran a
large, multinational event (which included the U.S. Navy and involved
active sonar and other disruptive activities) off the Cornish coast.
That event, the investigators concluded, was closely correlated in space
and time with the dolphins entering Falmouth Bay and eventually coming
ashore. All other possible causes - disease, algal blooms,
malnourishment - were eliminated.

The implication of naval exercises in a mass stranding will come as no
surprise to those who have followed this issue in the United States. Nor
will the Royal Navy's perfunctory denials in media accounts, which seem
awfully similar to what we have heard over the years from the U.S.
Navy.

In the case of mass strandings, what Navy officials always seem to
demand after the fact is some definitive, minute-by-minute record of the
victims' movements before beaching, as though it were possible to stick a tag on every whale
and dolphin in the sea. Until biologists can provide that infeasible
level of proof, the U.S. Navy refuses responsibility. But really, the
Cornwall case is simple: a gun was fired, there were bodies, and no one
else was in the room.

It's long past time for navies on both sides of the
Atlantic to stop denying the obvious and do something meaningful to
reduce harm, like putting especially vulnerable habitat off-limits to
dangerous training. Unfortunately, in the United States, that may be
something we have to fight for.

The reason is that proposed federal regulations
would permit the U.S. Navy to harm marine mammals more than 30 million
times over the next five years. This gargantuan number encompasses more
than 5 million instances of temporary hearing loss - a significant
impact for species like whales and dolphins that depend on hearing for
their survival. And, it includes more than 10,000 cases of permanent
injury and nearly 350 deaths from underwater explosions, vessel
collisions and sonar exercises. Of course these are the U.S. Navy's
estimates; the reality could be even worse.

In Southern California, which sees the lion's share of U.S. Navy
training on the West Coast, biologists are concerned that the U.S.
Navy's range has become a population sink
for deep-diving beaked whales, a family of marine mammal species that
is acutely vulnerable to high-powered naval sonar. And, new research on
the same range shows that U.S. Navy sonar silences the foraging calls of blue whales
over vast distances. That's a big problem since Southern California
represents a globally important foraging area for that endangered
species.

The U.S. Navy, still in denial mode, likes to claim that it has safely
operated off California and other places for decades, but just like in
Cornwall, that argument is wearing very thin.

Denial has its consequences, however. Neither the latest science nor its
own dramatic estimates of harm has moved the U.S. Navy to identify
better means of protecting whales and other marine life. Instead, it is
proposing the same meager protective measures - visually monitoring a
narrow strip around its vessels - that the scientific community and
the courts have repeatedly found inadequate. By contrast, avoiding
important habitat is universally acknowledged to be the most effective
available measure.

More than 550,000 people have signed a petition at Signon.org
calling for an end to the killing and harassment of marine mammals by
U.S. Navy sonar. With the new investigative findings in Britain adding
to the pile of evidence of harm, perhaps now the U.S. authorities will
do the right thing. Denial is no longer an option.

May 12, 2013 - UNITED STATES - Major stretches of river have already gone dry, farmers are leaving
their land fallow, and cities are clamping down on water use, but things
in New Mexico just went from bad to worse Thursday.

The latest map from federal forecasters shows exceptional drought has spread from a quarter of New Mexico to nearly 40 percent in just one week. At this time last year, less than one-tenth of the state was affected by what is considered the worst category of drought.

New Mexico - the nation's fifth largest state - is in the worst
shape of any state, and conditions have only intensified over the past
seven days.

This week's U.S. Drought Monitor shows a swath of red and dark red
across New Mexico, indicating extreme and exceptional drought
conditions. The ominous colors stretch up through the Midwest, showing
conditions have also worsened over the past year in parts of Colorado,
Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas.

"These kinds of conditions will certainly persist
for a while," said Tim Shy, a senior forecaster with the National
Weather Service in Albuquerque. "Even if we do get repeated rains over a
long period of time, for them to crack the threshold and get us back
out of the deep brown color is going to be pretty difficult indeed."

New Mexico is in its third year of drought. Following a
winter with dismal snowpack, little spring rain and windy conditions
have combined to leave the state's reservoirs at record lows. Parts of
the Rio Grande have dried up in southern New Mexico, and many
communities have rain deficits of a few inches just since the start of
the year.

Farmers in southern New Mexico are being hit the hardest. With little to
no irrigation water expected to come from the Rio Grande and Pecos
River this growing season, they are again relying on groundwater wells.

Along the Rio Grande, the wells have been dropping and there are limited options for drilling deeper.

Officials with the Elephant Butte Irrigation District said the runoff
forecast through July is calling for 22,000 acre-feet. That's just 5
percent of average.

The district says it has only enough water for a 30- to 40-day
irrigation season. This will mark both the shortest and smallest release
in the nearly 100-year history of the diversion project. - Yahoo.